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The Promotion World Informer
Issue #60 March 8, 1999
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This issue of the Informer is sponsored by:
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Contents Of This Issue:
- Editor's Notes
- Cool Quotes
- Friendly Advice from the Editor
- Sponsor Message
- Helping Others
- What's New At Promotion World
- Searching With Hayden
- "Junk" Mail
- The Discussion Board
- Sponsor Message
- Website Usability
- News Headlines
- A Small Request
- Misc. Information
=========================== Editor's Notes ======================
Hi there folks,
I just want to get some feedback from you guys. Lately The Informer
has been getting longer and longer and more and more full of
information. What do you think of this? Is it to long a read? Or do
you just pick and choose which columns to read each week? Would you
like it shorter? What are your favorite sections? What subjects would
you like to see covered?
I really just want some general feedback, good or bad. Send me your
honest comments: <mailto:webmaster@promotionworld.com&> This is your
newsletter, tell me what you want!
The Informer is sent only to those who have expressly requested it.
If you no longer wish to receive it, simply follow the simple
unsubscribe instructions at the end of this newsletter.
============================ Cool Quotes ========================
USA Today has come out with a new survey: Apparently three
out of four people make up 75 percent of the population.
- David Letterman
Where a calculator like the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum
tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only
1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1 1/2 tons.
- Popular Mechanics, ca. 1947
Character is the foundation stone upon which one must build to win
respect. Just as no worthy building can be erected on a weak
foundation, so no lasting reputation worthy of respect can be built
on a weak character.
- R. C. Samsel
Download all the past Cool Quotes by sending any email to
<mailto:quotes@promotionworld.com&> Enjoy!
================= Friendly Advice from the Editor =================
Okay folks, I have decided to make a few changes to The Informer and
the Promotion World website. It has come to my attention recently
that this newsletter (and the website) has been becoming increasingly
"professional" and "business like".
Don't get me wrong, I don't feel that there is anything wrong with
those things in and of themselves. However, some people have been
wishing for the "good old days" when Promotion World was more of a
friendly place to visit, and you could relax and have a good time,
even while learning.
I have come to the realization that, although my feature writers
do an excellent job of writing interesting and helpful articles each
week, there is still something lacking. Something to tie them all
together, and create a more friendly atmosphere. In short, more input
from me as your editor.
You may have already read through my popular promotion tutorial at
<http://www.promotionworld.com/tutorial/>. In a large part I credit
its run away success to the fact that firstly it is full of quality
information and secondly it is very humorously written. It gives my
visitors a very welcome feeling, making them want to stay around.
I have received a whole pile of comments from my visitors to back
this statement up. For example, Jupiterstar from <http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Harbor/7045> sent me an email
saying, "I just wanted to say that your page really helped and I
laughed every time I saw something about raising and selling beetles".
Patrick Van Slyke from <http://www.aaaalliance.org> said, "Great
tutorial! Easy to understand. I knew a lot of the information but
kept reading because it was fun and I kept learning little things
that make a big difference. I am happy I found you."
This makes me realize that people want personalization. People
like to be entertained while learning. I have learned that my
visitors like my site the best when I relax and talk to them on
a personal level.
Of course, I haven't thrown professionalism out the window. In
reference to the tutorial, it is relaxed but in a professional
sort of way, if you get my meaning. There is a fine line in my
mind between "relaxed" writing and sloppy looking, unprofessional
writing.
Relaxed style means a more friendly, one on one type of writing
style. Professionalism is clean, smooth reading material, error
free and, well, professional. I have come to the realization that
to build a good community, which visitors want to come back to,
both are needed. And yes, they can both exist quite happily, and,
in fact, prosperously together.
I just want you all to know that Promotion World won't be the stiff
old "we have added such and such" anymore. I will go back to the
"I have just added a new such and such" method. I am going on a
new personalization drive around the site... trying to turn the
rest of the site into the friendly style of the tutorial.
Another change you will be seeing is a new column in each issue
of the Informer, by yours truly. I know, I am busy, but I believe
that this is a much needed addition. I have titled it "Friendly
Advice from the Editor", on the recommendation of my friend
Duncan Johnson from <http://djd.freeservers.com> (he has some
good information there for flight simmers, by the way). This
will be an informal, relaxed section where I can give my opinions
on the latest promotion issues, or give you some advice on different
promotion techniques.
And remember, when it comes to your site... personalize at all
costs, but don't loose your professionalism in doing so.
Joshua
Editor/webmaster/ad sales guy/everything else at Promotion World.
======================= Sponsor Message =======================
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========================== Helping Others =========================
Helping Others
Mike Scanlin
"You can get whatever you want, if you help enough people
get whatever they want."
Advice from one of the world's greatest salesmen, Zig
Ziglar. Fortunately for web site owners, this advice is
simple to implement on the Internet, and I'll tell you how.
It's a way for the two sites involved to increase each
other's traffic (but it's not a standard link exchange).
You need to start by asking yourself "What do other people
want?" In the case of the Internet, other people are
typically web site owners and what they want is more
traffic. Increased traffic leads to all kinds of good
things: more sales, more advertising revenue, and better and
faster hardware. It's how you grow a business on the net.
In order to increase someone else's traffic you need to give
them something (for free) that they can put on their web
site to make their site more attractive. It needs to be some
kind of content that you can update on your end, without the
other site having to do any daily maintenance. It could be
daily news, movie reviews, weather photos, jokes, etc.
I chose Banner Tips (how to make effective advertisements).
I started offering free Banner Tips content for other
people's sites in exchange for having the Banner Tip be a
link back to my site. I give interested parties a couple of
lines of HTML that load a gif off of my server for display
on their web page, like this:
By using an nph cgi to return the image data I avoid
problems with browser caches (this is important since the
Banner Tip changes every 24 hours). The script automatically
changes the image it returns at midnight each night.
The advantage for client sites is that their traffic will
increase as people come back on a daily basis to see the
Banner Tip of The Day. We, of course, also benefit by people
clicking on the Banner Tip and coming to our site.
If you've got original content on your site then you could
probably package it into 24-hour slices and offer to give away
one slice each day to sites that display it and link it back
to you.
Find out more about our Banner Tip offer here:
http://www.whitepalm.com/fourcorners/tipOfTheDay.html
By enabling other sites to increase their traffic for free,
you will increase your own traffic.
Good luck,
Mike Scanlin
Sign up for our Free Banner Tip newsletter:
http://www.whitepalm.com/fourcorners/joinlist.html
================ What's New At Promotion World ==================
~ I restructured the What's New Archives at
<http://www.promotionworld.com/new.html> for you to browse
through. Why anyone would want to see what was added to Promotion
World in April '98 at <http://www.promotionworld.com/newapr98.html>
is beyond me, though.
~ Other minor changes were made throughout the site as well.
====================== Searching With Hayden =====================
Q. I just want to know if I register to a search engine with a
name from a redirection service (such as http://come.to) will it
affect my ranking?
A. The best advice I can give anyone is to get your own domain.
If you are serious do it. Some engines only allow the submission
of the root domain and there seems to be preferential treatment
given to the root domain on some engines others seem to favor
keywords contained in the actual domain name as in www.keyword.com.
Get a domain name. These redirection services will likely be
treated as a sub directory listing at first and may in time be
banned or limited as with the free web page services.
Hayden Mitchell
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=========================== "Junk" Mail =========================
"Junk" Mail
by Jennifer Johnson
Email is a powerful thing...it can hurt your business, or it can help it.
Spam is infamous for giving many people a less than desirable perception of
your company, while such things as autoresponders can oftentimes be beneficial
to both you and your customers.
What I'd like to talk about today is not email or email programs or tools, per
se, but your attitude toward using email when interacting with your visitors.
I think most of us love getting email when it pertains to our site. After all,
who wants to spend the time and effort designing, testing, refining, and
updating a site and never getting any feedback? I certainly don't, what about
you?
Of course you soon come to realize the wisdom of the old adage, "Be careful
what you wish for...". What was just a trickle to begin with can soon turn
into an overwhelming tidal wave of mail.
Be careful: this is when most site owners make a costly mistake, in my
opinion.
When you were getting 3 or 4 emails a week it was very easy to respond with a
"personal touch", wasn't it? When my site first started, the poor people who
emailed me the first few weeks probably lived to regret the decision. I was so
happy to get *any* email at all that I sent them each a short novel; they
probably thought I had just broken a 10 year vow of silence or something! I
answered the question they asked plus any other question that could possibly
be related to it. I was happy! I had email! I had visitors!
It didn't take too awful long for the novelty to wear off. The time came when
email became a real hassle and when I saw all those missives in my
mailbox...well, let's just say, next to me, the Grinch would've looked like
Mr. Rogers.
I'll venture a guess that you probably have some idea of what I'm talking
about. In the middle of all the orders and jobs lies a vast expanse of, "How
do I design a web page?", "What should I sell?", "My computer's not working.",
"My cat thinks your page is cool"; or, my personal favorite: "I bet a four
year old could design a better page than yours".
These are a pain in the you-know-what, aren't they? I mean, we've got better
things to do than spend all our time explaining to someone how a page with a
pretty picture magically appears on the screen when they click those blue-
colored letters. You're better off by sending that type of email straight to
the ol' trashcan, right?
WRONG.
Yep, you read it correctly: wrong! You shouldn't automatically trash this kind
of email; you shouldn't trash any email from your visitors if you ask me, and
I'll tell you why.
The first and foremost reason is this: these people wouldn't be writing to you
if they didn't need help. Do you remember when you started out? I do. I bugged
every person on the planet that had a web site - how do you do this? can you
help me with so-and-so? would you look at my page? - I asked every question
imaginable to everyone available.
Instead of looking on these types of correspondence as an annoyance, why not
see them for what they are? An opportunity.
You have an opportunity to help someone. Wouldn't you want someone to do the
same for you or for your mother or for your friend?
If altruism doesn't do it for you as motivation, consider this: I'm much more
likely to do business with someone who has helped me out or been kind to me in
some way. Have you ever heard someone say, "Well, if that's the kind of
attitude they have, I'll just take my business elsewhere." Have *you* ever
said that? You better know I have; many times. In my experience, it works the
other way around too.
If you reply personally to someone's email I think it can help establish a
relationship between you; hopefully help them to realize that there's a "real"
person behind your site; someone who wants to help them and that they can
trust. Who knows? He or she might be checking you out before deciding to do
business with you. Answering the email might just be the thing that swings
them in your favor instead of your competition.
Of course if you get 5 zillion emails a day, this might be a little
impractical. But whenever you can, in whatever way you can, I think
personalized responses can only help your business. You can use filters,
autoresponders, and a variety of other things to help manage your time
effectively and cut down on the total time spent responding to mail.
You never know; all it might take to turn a visitor into a customer could be
responding to his or her seemingly "unimportant" email.
PromotingYourSite.com
<http://www.promotingyoursite.com>
Free info on how to effectively design and promote your site. Join the "Rate
My Site Newsletter" (delivered 3-5 times/week) by sending any email to:
ratemysite-subscribe@listbot.com and find out how to submit *your* site for
other webmasters to review. Contact Jennifer directly at:
jenny@promotingyoursite.com.
===================== The Discussion Board ======================
This week's quote from the discussion board:
"Let's assume you have a Website of 1,000 pages and you need to
update it by changing Last Update: February 1, 1999 to March 1, 1999.
What to do?
You could access each page and change each page manually, or you
could use a new tool I found while searching the Net called "Search
& Replace 98". With this tool you can change all HTML files in your
directory, by selecting the option "Process entire directory". This
will automatically load every file, locate the phrase February 1,
1999 and replace it with March 1, 1999 and save all files changed.
No, I don't get a piece of the action - it's free! Download it at:
Search & Replace 98 <http://www.htmlworkshop.com/> and take it out
for a spin. It only takes up 273KB of space once installed.
Bill Green (Webdesign Moderator)
---
Learn How To Create Your Website For Free
<http://www.1stsitefree.com>"
Visit the message boards to comment on this quote or just to catch up on the
other exciting discussions going on!
<http://www.promotionworld.com/discus/>
Don't forget to stop by and receive a free review of your site! All
you need to do is review two other sites, and you will have a number
of experts giving you their opinions.
========================= Sponsor Message =======================
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marketing action every business day?
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Each business day, MTOTD delivers a Tip to you via e-mail. Each
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visit <http://www.clearlyinternet.com/mtotd.html>, or ...
To subscribe, send email to <mailto:mtotd-request@listhost.net>
in the *body* of the message type: subscribe
======================= Website Usability =======================
Free Stuff and Web Usability
by John S. Rhodes
Everyone loves free stuff. Capitalize on this and you can make your
site more user-centered. It can also drive up sales, profits, and
user satisfaction.
On the Web, freebies are a way of life. If you have free products
to give away, you can build traffic. If your users can download
software from your site, you can build traffic. If you offer free
information, such as hot tips and interesting news, you can build
traffic.
Good free stuff on your site can substantially increase site
traffic.
Before you rush off and start adding free stuff to your site,
however, please reflect on what you are doing. If the information
you offer is free, but it is lame, it has very little value. In
fact, if you promote free stuff that stinks, you will hurt yourself.
What you offer, whether it is free or not, has a direct impact on
your image and your branding. If you can't offer good free stuff,
don't offer it at all. Instead, point to a site that does have
good free stuff, such as Free2Try at <http://www.freetotry.com/>.
If you want to point to shareware or freeware, you can point to
places like Jumbo! at <http://www.jumbo.com/>, download.com at
<http://download.com/>, and TUCOWS <http://www.tucows.com/>.
Users love free stuff, and it is a very good idea to give it to
them when it is appropriate. Offers and links to free stuff can
add excellent content to your site. But, remember this one
important caveat: The free stuff must add value to your users
experience.
Let's look at an example. If I offered you free beer or wine
for a year, you would probably like the offer. However, if I
offered you free dirty socks for a year, you would probably not
like the offer. There is another level of this to consider. Even
if I could offer you something like free beer or wine, does it
really make sense given the nature of my Web site? That is,
WebWord.com is all about usability for the Internet. Offering free
beer and wine, while very interesting, probably doesn't add the
right kind of value to my site and doesn't really improve your
experience here.
So again, it is important to determine what your users want for
free. One easy way to determine what they want for free is to
determine what users want from your site in the first place. For
example, for WebWord.com, I know that you (my users) are here
for Web usability information. So, to augment your experience,
I could provide you with free usability software. I haven't found
any decent programs, but if I find any, I'll be sure to add them
to the site for you.
Perhaps some things are good to offer for free no matter what.
If I offered you a chance for free JellyBelly jelly beans, you
might jump at the offer. (Note: You can get a free sample of
their jelly beans at <http://www.jellybelly.com/sample_summary.html>
by being one of the first 600 users to their site on any given
day, and of course you'll need to fill out a brief survey.) Then
again, while it might be true that some free things are always
"cool", they don't really add value to your content. In this case,
the jelly beans probably won't add much to your WebWord.com experience.
Always think about why your users are at your site. When possible,
gather data about them; find out what they want. Listen to them
closely.
User Privacy and Freestuff
One issue that has been overlooked is that most users work on what
I'll call a "freestuff-privacy continuum". Users will trade their
privacy for freestuff. Some are willing to trade very little privacy
but they are willing to get very little free. On the other hand, some
people will virtually give away all of their privacy for free stuff.
Consider the recent case of Free-pc.com. This company offers you a
chance for a free computer and free Internet access. However, and
this is important, you are bombed with ads and you have to give up
quite a bit of personal information. In some respects, they own your
online life. So, you might be able to get a lot for free, but you
trade away your identity. In my opinion, this is not a trivial matter.
Some users will jump at the chance for anything free, despite the
cost. They do not value their private information. But, private
information is often more important than money because it can be
used to target users better. It also defines who you are. Obviously,
this information is a marketing gold mine.
Please remember, your personal information is a commodity and it
has great value. The general rule of thumb is that the better the
free item or service, the more personal information you'll need to
give up to get it. Keep this in mind about your users as well. You
never know what private information they are willing to trade for
your "free" good and services.
Let's summarize the article:
1) People want free stuff, so give it to them when it is reasonable.
But, be aware that what you offer reflects on you, your site, your
company, and your image.
2) Good freestuff on your site will increase traffic. However, only
offer free stuff when it adds value to your users' experience with
your Web site. If it doesn't relate to your site, don't offer it.
3) Users are willing to trade information about themselves for
free stuff. However, it can be difficult to know where they fall
on the freestuff-privacy continuum. As a heuristic, I suggest
asking for as little information as possible while offering the
greatest value. This places the balance of power in favor of your
users.
=========================================================================
John S. Rhodes -- mailto:john@WebWord.com
Human Factors Engineer and Usability Professional
Internet Usability and Web Site Development: http://www.WebWord.com/
========================= News Headlines ========================
I have decided to end this section for now. It ended up that I was
spending quite a bit of time searching out the best articles to
include in here, time which could better be spent on improving this
newsletter in other ways.
If you would like current internet news, I recommend you bookmark
<http://www.promotionworld.com/news.html> and visit it on a regular basis.
========================= A Small Request ========================
If you enjoy reading this newsletter each week, why not tell a friend
about it? Even better, why don't you recommend The Informer on a
discussion list? After all, you wouldn't want to keep all this free
information to yourself.
Just tell 'em all to subscribe by sending a message to
<mailto:informer@oaknetpub.com> with SUBSCRIBE in the BODY of their message.
======================== Misc. Information =======================
To comment on the issues covered in this week's newsletter, use the
appropriate forum on our Discussion Boards.
<http://www.promotionworld.com/discus/>
Browse the archives at <http://www.promotionworld.com/informer/archives.html>
If you are looking for some good advertising deals, you might like to
consider Promotion World and the Informer as places to advertise.
<http://www.promotionworld.com/sponsor.html>
To subscribe put SUBSCRIBE in the BODY of an email to
<mailto:informer@oaknetpub.com>
To unsubscribe put REMOVE in the BODY of an email to
<mailto:informer@oaknetpub.com>
I appreciate all your mail with your comments and suggestions!
<mailto:webmaster@promotionworld.com>
Newsletter Credits:
Joshua Reimer, Editor
<mailto:webmaster@promotionworld.com>
<http://www.promotionworld.com>
Jennifer Johnson, Feature Writer
<mailto:jenny@promotingyoursite.com>
<http://www.PromotingYourSite.com>
John S. Rhodes, Usability Specialist
<mailto:john@WebWord.com>
<http://www.WebWord.com/>
Hayden Mitchell, Search Engine Specialist
<mailto:hayden@webthemes.com>
<http://www.webthemes.com>
David Handlos, What Not To Do Specialist
<mailto:webmaster@crosslinkz.com>
<http://www.crosslinkz.com>
And now for the mandatory legal stuff:
This newsletter is copyright 1997, 1998, 1999 Joshua Reimer. No part may be
reproduced in any way without prior permission
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